Neuroscience and Psychology of Meditation in Everyday Life

Searching for the Essence of Mind

Dusana Dorjee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315461953
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

Neuroscience and Psychology of Meditation in Everyday Life addresses essential and timely questions about the research and practice of meditation as a path to realization of human potential for health and well-being.

Balancing practical content and scientific theory, the book discusses long-term effects of six meditation practices: mindfulness, compassion, visualization-based meditation techniques, dream yoga, insight-based meditation and abiding in the existential ground of experience. Each chapter provides advice on how to embed these techniques into everyday activities, together with considerations about underlying changes in the mind and brain based on latest research evidence.

This book is essential reading for professionals applying meditation-based techniques in their work and researchers in the emerging field of contemplative science. The book will also be of value to practitioners of meditation seeking to further their practice and understand associated changes in the mind and brain.

Chapter 1
The new science of meditation

Meditation is, for the most part, no longer viewed as an exotic mystical spiritual practice. Scientific research conducted over the last two decades suggests that meditation-based techniques can have health and well-being enhancing effects in a range of clinical conditions. For example, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) has been shown as effective as antidepressant medication in the treatment of recurrent depression (Kuyken et al., 2015). There is also encouraging cumulative evidence on the beneficial effects of mindfulness-based approaches in the treatment of anxiety (Hofmann et al., 2010). In addition, research using psycho-physiological and neuroscientific methods documented changes in body and brain functioning after only four or five days of regular meditation practice for 20 minutes a day (Tang et al., 2007; Zeidan et al., 2011). As a result, meditation is becoming a mainstream approach to health and well-being.

Nevertheless, many questions about the effects and mechanisms of meditation, particularly when it comes to long-term practice, remain unanswered. This is partially due to the health-related applications of meditation and associated research typically taking only a limited short-term view of meditation as a tool for ‘fixing various health problems’. Such an approach, while useful as an initial step in the development of a new field, restricts a broader perspective of the role meditation can play in supporting human potential for health and well-being beyond a specific health complaint. As the discipline of meditation research moves to a formative stage which will define its future standing amongst other sciences and approaches, it is timely to consider questions about the broader and long-term goals of meditation practice and research. This chapter outlines the foundations of a framework for application and research of meditation which could enable us to fully harness what meditation can offer to our health and well-being.

What is the science of meditation missing?

Majority of neuroscience research on meditation has so far been investigating how meditation changes brain structures and functions underlying our abilities to focus attention and manage our emotions (Tang, Hölzel and Posner, 2015). Yet, very few studies examined how such brain changes might be relevant to our sense of self and our deeper views of meaning and purpose in life. So despite the explosion of meditation research over the last two decades, most of the studies have neglected the possible impact of meditation on our sense of meaning and purpose. This is somewhat paradoxical, given that the ultimate aim of most meditation practices is to enable the practitioner to explore such existential questions; meditation practices are usually embedded in contemplative systems which support and guide the practitioner on a spiritual path of exploring these questions.

So if the essential goal of meditation practices is in enabling exploration of life’s meaning and purpose, why is this aspect of meditation mostly ignored in the current research? There might be several reasons for this and the first one could be simply the consequence of meditation research being a young scientific discipline. Due to the nascent state of the field, most of the initial studies focused on demonstrating that meditation can have measurable impact on our health and well-being. Similarly, most neuroscientific research on meditation has been aiming to show that meditation training can be associated with detectable changes in the brain which might be health-conducive. This initial research has provided useful evidence which invited more mainstream interest in both applications and further research on meditation. Indeed, the research literature on meditation currently grows by nearly a thousand studies each year in comparison to a couple dozen per year three decades ago.

Another reason why the research on meditation has so far mostly omitted the existential questions of meaning and purpose is perhaps the complexity of meditation training. Traditional approaches to meditation are greatly multifaceted: they involve cultivation of attention control and stability, practices targeting emotional well-being, reflections on values and the construal of meaning in life, etc. (Dorjee, 2013), coupled with faith-based and ritualistic practices. Understanding and capturing such rich systems of meditation training is a very difficult task. As a consequence, vast majority of research on meditation has so far focused on particular meditation techniques, such as mindfulness, separated from the complex traditional systems where they originated. This approach might have been necessary in the initial phases of meditation research, but is becoming restrictive as the field evolves towards a more mature stage and searches for its unique standing amongst other scientific disciplines. Indeed, investigation of meditation techniques as methods of training attention, improving emotion regulation or enhancing well-being to some extent falls short of clearly showing how these techniques differ from other non-meditation-based ways of training attention, emotion regulation or well-being. After all, research shows that some computer games can enhance attention (Dye, Green and Bavelier, 2009) and various positive psychology methods can make us happier (Seligman et al., 2005)!

Given that meditation-based methods are not the only ways to improve our cognitive functioning or well-being and the evidence base on meditation is still fairly limited, it is surprising how much scientific and lay interest in meditation there currently is. It is also surprising how polarizing the attitudes towards meditation techniques and associated research are – on one side of the continuum there are strong enthusiasts, on the other sworn critics, with little balance in perceptions in the middle of the range of opinions. And quite often meditation techniques, particularly mindfulness, are currently referred to as ‘the latest fad’ across the continuum of perceptions.

Interestingly, one possible explanation for this somewhat imbalanced pattern of views might be that meditation techniques are tapping into the existential (meaning and purpose related) aspect of our experience which remains mostly unaddressed by other psychological approaches and more broadly by our materialistic society and the culture of popularity contests. The meditation techniques seem to provide a connection for experiential exploration of our deeper sense of meaning, purpose in life and genuine happiness. Accordingly, the proponents of meditation may see meditation-based approaches as uniquely placed to address this yearning for existential connection. And the criticism of meditation might actually also be related to the same aspect of meditation – at least some of the critics highlight that current research artificially isolates meditation techniques from their contemplative systems and presents them as means to an end, be it the reduction in stress or increase in attention focus, rather than as a path to deeper existential exploration. So both opinion extremes might be actually responding to the existential dimension of meditation training which is mostly not considered in both further research and the teaching of psychological meditation-based approaches.

How can current meditation research and teaching address this important gap in our understanding and practice of meditation? It is possible that the solution will require a somewhat radical shift in the way we have been approaching meditation research and the application of meditation-based techniques so far. It might be that we need to build a ‘new science of meditation’ which would clearly lay out the unique subject, aims and methods of the discipline with existential dimension of meditation and its impact on our health and well-being taking central stage. As a first step, we may need to expand our perspective of meditation practices beyond the practices themselves and start taking into account the goals and progression of the whole path of meditation training. And to tackle the complexity of such a perspective, we may need to look for common broader patterns of changes in the processes of the mind, and associated changes in the brain, in long-term meditation practice (Dorjee, 2016). Whilst applying this approach, the similarities and differences in changes resulting from different meditation approaches, including mindfulness, compassion, visualization, contemplative prayer, insight practices etc., will be of particular interest. Such research and applications may give rise to a science of meditation as a discipline with strong foundations and important implications for long-term approaches to health and well-being at the individual level and beyond. We will now explore the core building blocks and principles of the new science of meditation.

The mind’s capacity to self-regulate

The ability to manage attention, emotions and behaviour is necessary for our effective everyday functioning including planning, decision making, well-being and academic success. This ability is in psychology often referred to as ‘self-regulation’ and development of effective self-regulation is one of the key themes in education. This is not surprising given that levels of self-regulation in 2-year-olds have been found to predict their health, wealth and even levels of criminality as adults (Moffitt et al., 2011). Hence, there is keen interest amongst educators, health professionals, parents and policy makers in supporting children to develop effective self-regulation in childhood and in the enhancement of self-regulatory skills across the life-span.

Interestingly, improvements in self-regulation seem to underlie the beneficial outcomes associated with training in meditation-based approaches, particularly mindfulness (Tang, Hölzel and Posner, 2015). Some aspects of self-regulation are uniquely targeted by meditation practices, the core one being the awareness of thoughts, sensations, feelings, behaviours and their underlying processes. The awareness and observation of contents and processes in one’s own mind is often referred to as introspection. It is also referred to as a metacognitive skill, meaning that this awareness can be considered as happening one level above the usual contents and processes of the mind – it is the awareness of the contents and processes of the mind which is distinct from the contents and processes observed.

Alongside the metacognitive introspective awareness which particularly helps to monitor for and notice distractions when we are trying to focus, meditation practices develop the ability to shift attention away from distraction and stay focused on the object of meditation. The object of meditation can vary from sensations associated with breathing, to sounds and visualizations of complex sacred images. Focused contemplation on a certain topic (such as impermanence of our perceptions, material things or bodies) can also train attention control and attention focus whilst the metacognitive introspective awareness monitors for distractions or divergence in thinking to other topics. These fundamental attention skills together with metacognitive introspective awareness are the basis of any meditation training. This is because without stability of these skills the mind is unsettled and any examination of its mental processes, contents, habits and their roots is easily interrupted. Such distractibility would prevent deepening of understanding and experiential exploration.

Another aspect of self-regulation specifically cultivated through meditation training aims to develop particular emotional qualities and strategies of regulating emotions. Emotions such as loving kindness and compassion are central to contemplative training in the Buddhist tradition. Some Buddhist schools equally emphasize sympathetic joy of own and others’ virtue and equanimity in relating to all beings, not only those who are close and dear to us, with loving kindness and compassion (Wallace, 1999). These emotional qualities are in Buddhism intrinsically linked to understanding and conscious effort in cultivating virtue and avoiding non-virtue. This ethical dimension of practice gives distinctive direction to practice goals and the progression of meditation training (Dorjee, 2013).

Cultivation of these emotional qualities is intertwined with development of specific emotion regulation strategies which enable the practitioner to manage emotions. For example, the meditation-specific emotion regulation strategies may involve grounding of attention focus on a neutral anchor such as breath sensations when anxiety or anger arises. Other strategies may encourage ‘transformation’ of negative emotions into their positive antidotes, for instance, by invoking images and feelings of loving kindness in response to experiencing anger. Another approach to emotion regulation through meditation-based techniques may involve experiential examination of the nature of emotions which can lead to realization of their neutral experiential ground from which they arise.

The enhancement of attention skills and the development of certain emotional qualities and strategies is also coupled with changes in patterns of thinking and experiencing – in conceptual processing. For example, as a result of conscious cultivation of healthy emotions and well-being supporting ways of responding, we may spend less time in negative rumination about our experiences. Rumination often happens in the form of speech (expressed out loud or silently); it often brings up certain emotional feelings and sometimes also visual images or other sensations. The shift in patterns of rumination as a result of engaging in meditation practices may lead to changes in how often we access negative meanings and negative schemas associated with a distinct pattern of brain activation. For example, a recent study found that those with higher trait mindfulness, people naturally more mindful even without explicit training in meditation, are less likely to access negative word meanings (Dorjee et al., 2015). Other studies have found less activation in brain areas associated with language processing in meditators (e.g., Pagnoni, Cekic and Guo, 2008), which suggests that meditators are less prone to rumination.

The outlined changes in attention, emotion regulation and conceptual processing do not work in isolation; they interact and cumulatively contribute to the changes in self-regulation resulting from meditation. Their distinctive feature is that they specifically rely on the metacognitive (introspective) awareness of thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations which enables the development of effective self-regulation. In this way, meditation seems to uniquely target a particular propensity of the mind for metacognitive self-regulation which has been termed the ‘metacognitive self-regulatory capacity of the mind’ (MSRC) (Dorjee, 2016). Since most previous research on self-regulation did not consider the contribution of the introspective metacognitive awareness to self-regulation or the interactions between attention/emotion regulation and conceptual processing, our understanding of the MSRC and its role in our health and well-being is fairly limited. However, the available evidence on well-being and the health-conducive effects of meditation indirectly suggests that improvements in the MSRC might be pivotal to these beneficial outcomes. We will now look closer at possible physiological pathways mediating the impact of the MSRC on bodily functioning.

So far, all the changes in the MSRC we have discussed – including self-regulation, emotion regulation and conceptual processing – were about modifications in the mind and brain with meditation. But these changes would have little impact on our well-being if they did not affect the physiological processes in the body. This link is rarely emphasized in current research on meditation and deserves much more attention in future research. Most research has so far focused either on changes in the mind and brain or on changes in bodily functioning, but not on associations between them. The main physiological mechanisms enabling interactions between the brain and body physiology involve regulation of hormones, hence the relevant physiological pathways are often labelled as ‘neuroendocrine’. These pathways involve the release of hormones in the brain, often in response to a real or imaged threat such as a speeding car or a memory of an argument. Through the blood stream these hormones travel throughout the body and can activate the release of stress hormones (most relevant here is the hormone cortisol) in the adrenal glands. The stress hormones are released into the blood stream and then travel to the brain, signalling the need for downregulation of the stress response. If the brain isn’t able to downregulate the stress hormone levels, over time the heightened levels of cortisol can lead to a damage in some brain structures which have cortisol receptors (such as the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex). This can manifest as difficulties in remembering, concentrating, decision making etc.

Research studies on the impact of meditation practice on the neuroendocrine functioning are still scarce. Initial evidence suggests that more meditation practice is associated with stronger reductions in morning levels of cortisol (Brand et al., 2012). Another study showed increases in physiological markers of parasympathetic system activity (a branch of the autonomic nervous system associated with rest and digest response in contrast to the sympathetic fight and flight response) after ten days of Vipassana meditation retreat (Krygier et al., 2013). The research evidence on the impact of secular meditation programmes on the stress physiology is mixed (O’Leary, O’Neill and Dockray, 2015) with positive effects reported in some studies but not in others. And very few studies examined the links between brain activation and body physiology more directly. As an exception, one study found close associations between increases in the activity of a brain region involved in attention control (ACC – anterior cingulate cortex) and increases in parasympathetic system response (Tang et al., 2009). There is a need for more studies of this type.

Purpose, meani...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The new science of meditation
• 2 Long-term meditation practice
• 3 Mindfulness
• 4 Compassion and related qualities
• 5 Visualization in meditation practice
• 6 Existential insight and dream yoga
• 7 The state of existential balance
• 8 The potential of contemplative science
• Glossary
• Index